Women being trained to nurture cane seedlings
LUCKNOW: With sugarcane being a round-the-year crop, as there are two planting seasons, and the sugar industry continuing to function even through Covid-19 lockdown, the demand for cane seedlings, unlike many other things, have only gone high, prompting the UP Cane Development Department to engage women for nurturing cane seedlings (graft).
“We are running the training process in 26 sugarcane growing districts of the state and have trained 1,339 rural women entrepreneurs in 145 SHGs to prepare cane seed nurseries. Sugarcane is cultivated on large scale as a cash crop in the state and thus there is immense scope for SHGs to make earnings by selling seedlings,” said Sanjay R Bhoosreddy, commissioner, cane and sugar, department Uttar Pradesh. The women SHGs will prepare sugarcane nursery at their village level through ‘single bud’ and ‘bud chip’ methods to help them augment their income by selling the seedlings.
The Cane Development Council and sugar mills have jointly selected villages for imparting training to women entrepreneurs. Bhoosreddy also said that necessary machinery, on subsidised rates with the cooperation of sugar mills, will be provided to the SHGs.
The women are being given training regarding seed selection, cutting bud pieces from the hand-operated machine, germination in-tray, time of growing, and method of planting.
The move would also help the state to increase the new sugarcane varieties from single bud and bud chip nursery. The seedlings prepared by the methods will solve the problem of late sowing due to excessive moisture in the fields for autumn cane sowing in lowland and floodprone areas while autumn cane area will also increase. The method will also be useful in case, the cane is sown late after harvesting of wheat crop.